Wasting Time On An Off Night

Tonight is the first of three Mondays that the Yankees will have off in a row. It's probably a welcome relief for the players and beat writers, who have only had two days off (not including rain outs) since April 23rd. For most fans, the void of not having a game to watch on a weeknight is not as highly anticipated. One of the things that's great about baseball is that's it's there almost every night. When you come to the realization that you might have to find something else to do or watch on a weeknight, it can be a bit of a letdown.

The NBA Finals just wrapped up, the Stanley Cup finals are over and baseball finally has the summer all to itself. And on the first night that is the case, there are a whopping two MLB baseball games to chose from and one from the College World Series.

• Brewers vs. Indians - 7:05 - ESPN - Carl Pavano starts for the Cleveland against David Bush. This is a tough sell for Yankees fans, or anyone who isn't a fan of these two teams for that matter. It's not a natural rivalry and although the Brewers are in first place in the NL Central, it's hard to get excited for this one.
  
  
• Angels vs. Giants - 10:05 - MLB.tv, MLB Extra Innings or a couple of stations in California that I'm not going to bother to look up because if you get this broadcast you already know what they are - John Lackey vs. Barry Zito. Another not-so-appealing match-up for East Coasters but might be worth your while if Zito gets shelled in the first few innings.
  
  
• Arkansas vs. LSU - 7:00 - ESPN2 - Tune in to probably see some player(s) who will make the major leagues one day who you will never remember.

Perhaps you would like to avoid sports all together for one night? How about:

• No Reservations : Peru, Hong Kong - 7:00, 8:00 - Travel Channel - A show about traveling by the seat of your pants and eating great food. Yes, I am a fan of Anthony Bourdain.
  
  
• If shitty reality TV shows are your thing, Uproxx's Warming Glow has some recommendations for you.
  
  
• Real Time With Bill Maher - 8:00 - HBO - A re-run from Friday night, but it's a solid episode. First guest is Larry King and the panel consists of Chris Matthews, a former homeland security advisor and the head of the NAACP.
  
  
• Joe Buck Live - 9:00 - HBO - Just in case you didn't hate this show just because Joe Buck is hosting it, Brett-fucking-Favre is his first guest.
  
  
• Weeds - 10:00 - Showtime - It's an entertaining show that's a little bit over the top at times, but still a lot of fun to watch. It's amazingly already in it's 5th season and feels like it still has some plotlines to explore.
  
  
• Nurse Jackie - 10:30 - Showtime - Piggybacking off of an established show is a pretty good way to develop a viewership. Snagging Edie Falco from the Sopranos doesn't hurt either.

Or, if you happen to be kicking around the Upper West Side of Manhattan this evening, stop by the Amsterdam Ale House for an event that The Bruery is hosting. That's where I'll be wasting time.

The Next $305M Deal

[Sorry for the lack of content today, but I was knee deep in a gigantic report that I worked on 'til 10 on Friday night, put it on few more hours on over the weekend, which was due today and still probably isn't going out until tomorrow morning. This piece was originally drafted on Friday, but I didn't even have a chance to touch it up and post it. We should be back to the regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.]

If this offseason is any indication of things to come, I wouldn't be all that surprised if A-Rod's deal is still the biggest in baseball history when he retires.

Like the values of homes across the country, we just assumed contracts in sports would keep getting larger. For my entire lifetime, when you made an investment in a home, it inevitably looked better five or ten years down the road.

When the Yankees signed Derek Jeter to his 10 year extension in 2001, they probably thought the market was catch up with the contract, which is probably why they didn't include any reverse escalator clauses for what were presumably going to be his decline years. The market hasn't collapsed around that deal (yet), but it certainly hasn't outpaced it.

Think about how much of a reversal of public opinion is going to be necessary to turn around the economy right now. I see numbers for a economic tracker we are doing at work and I can tell you that roughly 65% of people think the economy is worse than it was a month ago, and basically everyone else thinks it's staying the same.

Since the Dow Jones is really just a reflection of consumer confidence, it's not looking like this is turning around anytime soon. At least during the Great Depression they didn't have 8,000 forms of media constantly reminding everyone how fucked they were. We can throw as much money at this problem as we want, but things are going to get better until people think it's getting better, because perception is reality.

At what point are people going to start putting new money in the stock market and expecting to make money, like before? I'm a child of the 90's. That's where I did most of my growing up (from 6-16), and financially, it couldn't have come in a more prosperous time. On January 2nd, 1990 the Dow opened at 2,753 and on December 31st 1999, it closed at 11,453.

That means if you just invested in the DJIA for ten years, you could have more than quadrupled your money. Today, the Dow is sitting at 6,874, so if you had kept it in for the last nine years (or 9 months), you would have lost almost half of what you made. Infinite growth is unsustainable. The expectation of infinite growth leads to exaggerations (Enron) and shortcuts (sub-prime) which ripple out from their specific domains (the current Banking mess). I'm an even worse financier than I am a sports blogger, so please tell me where I'm off-base.

[Bill Maher hit on some of this on Real Time on Friday night, after I had already written this. My sister will vouch for me. Stop looking at my drafts on Blogger, Bill. You dick.]

And unfortunately that means it's going to trickle down to sports at some point. I'm not sporting Bill Simmons tin foil hat just yet, but if attendance starts dropping, how can it not affect the bottom line? There are only so many other expenses you can trim on a sports franchise. The player's salaries make up the vast majority of operating costs.

Most importantly, who is going to be the type of player to get a bigger deal than A-Rod? Not a pitcher, obviously. It would have to be an excellent defensive player with power at either CF, SS, or possibly 2B, 3B or C. Hanley Ramirez got his and he's not that great defensively. Evan Longoria is locked up through 2016 with club options. Albert Puljos is going to be "31" when his contract is up. It would probably have to be some young buck who's just a prospect now, and tears up the minors, makes it to the majors at age 18, like A-Rod did, and becomes a free agent at 25. Even then, a $252M deal, much less a $305M one, seems like quite the lofty goal.

Anyone up for a friendly wager?

[This is my last depressing A-Rod related post for a while. I promise.]

Asshats

In honor of the fact that Real Time with Bill Maher starts up again tomorrow night, I've got a New Rule:

New Rule: Team apparel can only be sold in team colors.

The above items are useful for exactly one day per year, which doesn't even fall during the baseball season. Have at it, Sox fans! Grab yourself a pair of those pajama pants, one of those hideous green shirts, and wave that "lucky" banner while you are jumping off the Prudential Center.

I'm not just picking on the Sox. Check out all of these acts against God:

If are wearing one of those right now, please ex-out of your browser and never read this blog again.

Are you a Mets fan but want to wear a Yankees hat for some odd fucking reason? Maybe you are a Yankees fan who just adores the combination of blue an orange. A lifelong David Cone/Doc Gooden/Darryl Strawberry fan?

No? Are you a straight gangsta from Oakland who ain't afraid to show some love for da Yanks? Or a colorblind nerd from New York attending Berkley?
Then you must like the Braves, Cubs or Pirates, and are dying to wear their colors on the hat of the most hated franchise in all of baseball, right?

Can someone please explain how buying a team's hat with another team's colors on it makes even one small bit of sense? Do you like both teams? Do you wear it only when the two teams play each other? What takes precedence, the logo or the colors?

Look, I understand the financial reasons a team has to bastardize their logo by sewing it onto a million different hats. More unique items translate into more sales. There are some very stupid people out there who probably want a Yankees hat to go with every outfit they own and are not ashamed to look like a complete and utter douchebag while doing it.

But here is a short message to those dummies and others who have bought branded merchandise in non-official team colors:

You are suckers.

At a certain point the following conversation happened somewhere in the MLB offices:

Executive: Our merchandise sales are stagnating, gentlemen. What can we do about it?

Sales guy #1: Well, we could make it cheaper, sir...

Executive: You're fired.

Sales guy #2: We could try to increase our global distrib-

Executive: Great idea! Just kidding, you're a moron. Next?

Sales guy #3: Well, we could make stuff in different colors...

Executive: Brilliant! We'll put out a never ending stream of new colors and some idiots are bound to buy them!

In closing: Don't be a sheep. If you don't like your team's official colors, don't buy the merchandise. If you are worried about the colors of your team's hat and whether or not they match with the rest of your clothing, rest assured that people will notice how ugly you are long before the fact that your hat clashes with your stupid jacket.